Heaven Is Beyond Imagination: The Music, Beauty, Waters, Flowers, Joy, Peace, Love, Relationships, and More Described by fifty Published Eye Witnesses

By Dr. Jacques E. LaFrance

Have you wondered what a loved one is like in Heaven? Have you wondered whether you will actually enjoy life there? Do you wonder if your favorite pet will be there? There are many books telling what the Bible tells us about heaven and some books where the author claims to have been there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Nov 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890912800

Dr. Jacques E. LaFrance

Dr. Jacques Lafrance became a follower of Jesus as a freshman at Harvard University. Throughout the rest of his undergraduate and graduate work he was active in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. After completing his Ph.D. in computer science, he taught at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma and finally in the master 's program at Oklahoma State University, Tulsa campus. In the 1970's he was introduced to George Ritchie's Return from Tomorrow and Maurice Rawlings' Beyond Death's Door. He has ultimately read the 58 books in the bibliography.He conceived the idea of Heaven Is Beyond Imagination to create a thorough overview of what heaven is like in all of its features by putting together different authors' descriptions of each feature. He has recently completed a novella based on this book, A Walk Through Heaven. He currently lives in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and is a member of First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa, but spends a lot of his time at his wife's home in western Kansas.

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Heaven Is Beyond Imagination: The music, beauty, waters, flowers, joy, peace, love, relationships, and more, described by fifty published eyewitnesses

Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Jacques E. LaFrance

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 979-8-89091-279-4

ISBN eBook: 979-8-89091-280-0

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1:Approaching Heaven

Friends and Guides

Tunnel or Beam

Immediate Arrival

Immediate Arrival with Jesus

Transporters

Arrival in Clouds

Summary

Chapter 2:First Glimpses of Heaven

Emotion

Sights

Heavenly grass

Summary

Chapter 3:Biblical Features of Heaven

The Wall

The Gates of Heaven

The Streets of Gold

The Light of Heaven

The City

Summary

Chapter 4:Personal Appearances

Bodies

Hair

Minds and Senses

Vision

Clothing

Summary

Chapter 5:Heavenly Music

Heavenly and Choral Music

Instrumental Music

Chimes and Bells

Summary

Chapter 6:River of Life, Lake, And Sea

The River

The Lake

The Sea

Fountains

Summary

Chapter 7:Trees, Fruit, Flowers, Grass

Colors

Trees and Their Fruit

Flowers

Aromas

Grass

Summary

Chapter 8:Landscapes and Sky

Landscapes

Sky

Summary

Chapter 9:Things, Work, Recreation

Conveyances

Tools

Work

Recreation

Summary

Chapter 10:Meeting Jesus

Former Muslim Meets Jesus after Jihad’s Bomb

Do You Want to Stay or Go Back?

Another Muslim Meets Jesus and Is Instantly Healed

Stand up and come to me. I am Jesus

Jesus Comes to Rhoda Crying in Her Bed

Several Experience Jesus’ Radiance and Power

Jesus’ Appearance, Compassion, Understanding, and Control

Jesus’ Deep Unconditional Love

Jesus Has a Beautiful Laugh, Smiles Easily and Often

Jesus Is Rugged But Handsome, His Eyes Striking

Jesus Is Unconditional Love

Tell My people I am coming soon. I love them.

Jesus’ Overwhelming Love

Endless Kindness and Compassion

Markers

"You are worthy"

Jesus has Beautiful Eyes and More Love Than You Can Imagine

"You are in the presence of the Son of God."

The Light of Jesus

It’s in His Book

A Child’s View

Other Encounters with Jesus

Summary

Chapter 11:Meeting Family & Friends

Don Piper Meets Many

Dale Reppert Meets Many Loved Ones

Rebecca Springer’s Brother-in-law and Others

Richard Sigmund Learns His Grandpa Had Been Praying for Him

Dale Black’s Spiritual Family

Meeting Grandparents

Abby Cleghorn Meet Her Mother and Sister She Never Knew

Others Observed Being Greeted

Meeting Miscarried Sister

Summary

Chapter 12:Seeing Saints of Old and Angels

Martin Luther and John Wesley

John the Baptist

Johann Sebastian Bach

Kathryn Kuhlman and C. H. Mason

Mary, Peter, James, and Paul

Mary Magdalene

Simon of Cyrene

Peter

Angels

Accompanying Angels

Other Classes of Angels

Other Angels

Angels’ Appearances

Angels and Worship

Summary

Chapter 13:Children and Animals In Heaven

Children

Babies and Toddlers

Miscarried and Aborted Babies

Children Playing

Heaven’s Nursery

Children’s Names in the Nursery

More on Aging in Heaven

Children and Jesus

Animals

Pets

Summary

Chapter 14:Mansions In Heaven

Summary

Chapter 15:The Throne of God

Summary

Chapter 16:Archives of Heaven, The Book of Life

Archives

Book of Life

Summary

Chapter 17:Libraries, Education, and Other Buildings

Libraries

Education

Marriage Supper of the Lamb

Auditorium

Other Buildings

Summary

Chapter 18:Life in Heaven

Happiness, contentment, joy, love

Heaven defies earthly description

Being in God’s/Jesus’ presence the best

Everything is better than on Earth

Chapter 19:Life Here After Heaven Visit

Betty Malz

Steven Musick

Dale Black

Peter Baldwin Panagore, Marissa Valbona, Dale Reppert

Mary Neal

Marvin Besteman, Mary K. Baxter

Jeff Olsen

God’s Spirit Enables Us to Cope

Don Piper

Crystal McVea

Jeanne Enstad, Laurie Ditto, B. W. Melvin

Conclusion

Chapter 20:Physics of Heaven

Chapter 21:Non-Heaven Experiences

Peter Panagore

Marisa Valbona

George Ritchie

Jim Woodford

Chapter 22:Conclusion

Revelation 21:1-22:6

Confirmation of Scripture

Conclusions

Further Reading

Final Summarizing Story

Conclusion

Appendix

The Bad News

Glimpses of Hell by Passersby

Just Missed Experiences of Hell

Second Chance Experiences of Hell

Vortices to Hell and Cells in Hell

Good is Not Good Enough

Other Testimonies of the Horrors of Hell

Experiences of Hell by Some Not Going There

Ian McCormack to Hell First, then Heaven

Howard Storm: Dying in Paris

Terance Hopkins: Heaven then Hell

James Woodford Stood on the Brink Hell

Laurie Ditto: Hell Is Too Terrible for Words

Kat Kerr Saw People in Hell

Dale Black saw Demons Coming to take Chuck to Hell

George Ritchie’s glimpse of Hell

Thomas Welch and Others’ Encounters with Hell

Richard Sigmund visits hell

Richard Eby experienced hell for two minutes in a visit to Israel

Experience of Three Others

Bill Weise Suddenly in Hell

A Divine Revelation of Hell

Funnels to Hell

Horrible Torments, Pain, Sorrow, and Fire Pits

Demons in Hell and Occupants of Fire Pits

The Belly of Hell

The Fun Center of Hell

A Tower of Cells

Alone in Hell

Darkness, Cold, and Odors Accompanies Death

The Bad News of Denying God’s Authority

Suicides

The Antidote

Conclusion

Annotated Bibliography

About the Author

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Carolyn Tillman BSN, RN. When I was finishing this, I had a routine outpatient surgery that went well. There were no complications, and I was scheduled to be discharged after I left recovery. But in recovery my heart rate dropped and then quit. Carolyn was alert and promptly started chest compressions to get my heart restarted. Had it not been for her alertness and prompt professional attention, this book may have never been published. So the fact that you have this book in your hands is a testimony to Carolyn. It is very fitting that I dedicate it to her. May she be blessed and continue saving lives as your servant.

It is also dedicated to the Father and to the Son, who endured horrible torture, rejection, and cruel and unusual death to pay for our rebellion and sin. Such is the extent of His love for us. Everything described in this book is a product of that love and is tribute to it.

PREFACE

The grass was the most vivid shade of green I had ever seen and the hillside meadow looked like a perfectly manicured golf course dotted with perfect beautiful flowers that were unfamiliar to me. As I stepped on the grass, the three inch blades came up through my foot undamaged and transmitted energy throughout my body.

I was overwhelmed by the love, peace, and acceptance I experienced there.

I experienced peace and tranquility there greater than any human has ever known on Earth.

One thing that is constant in heaven but rarely found on Earth is a constant peaceful happy feeling. It caused my spirit to rejoice and know I was home there.

In Heaven there is total love, confidence, and peace, and everything is perfect, blissful; there is no fear, just total joy and peace. God’s love is so far beyond our experience here that our minds cannot fathom it. We are infused with that love the moment we enter heaven. He is in us and we are in him in wonderful ways beyond anything we can know here.

Heaven feels like being inside pure joy. We have no words to describe it.

Music, light, love, and vibrant life permeated everything. It was not just around me; it was in me. It was the most wonderful thing I have ever experienced. It felt like I belonged here; it was what I had been searching for all my life. I didn’t want to leave.

Heaven is not about what we get; it is all about God.

These reactions are common in eyewitness testimonies of heaven from the fifty-eight books in my bibliography. Their visits to heaven resulted from either a temporary clinical death or an out-of-body journey of the spirit. I have ignored the so-called near death out-of-body experiences (NDE) that fall short of seeing heaven or hell and generally considered only those testimonies of actual visits to heaven or hell. Many of these authors believe Jesus gave them this experience beyond death to tell us what He has prepared for us. While each author’s own testimony is impressive, very few people will be able to read more than just a few of these books. This book is not just a repetition of others’ stories of heaven. I have considered different features of heaven and extracted from the various books what those authors have said about those features. As a result, you get a description of heaven more complete and focused than any other book gives, and it is based only on eyewitness testimony. You can see the consistency between different accounts of heaven and also the variability of different perceptions. Also you see more features of heaven because different people have been shown different things. No one person has seen all there is. Nor has this book captured all of heaven. There is much more that awaits us, but I hope the insight in this book gives you enough of the whole picture to excite you, help you change your life to have eternal priorities, appreciate and praise your Father and our Lord more than before, be excited to tell others either what they can anticipate or what they are going to miss, or encourage those who have lost a loved one. My prayer is that you will be blessed, more than you were before, and that your life on Earth will be filled with more joy, hope, and praise.

I chose the title, Heaven Is Beyond Imagination: The music, beauty, flowers, landscapes, joy, peace, love, relationships, and more, described by fifty published eyewitnesses, because, first of all, many of the those giving their testimonies state there aren’t words to describe what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, or experienced. Their experience in heaven surpasses anything they have known here and leaves very little to which they can compare it. Don Piper said he cannot find enough words even to come close to being able to describe the actual experience. (Piper 1018, 132) And he said it is hard to imagine the bliss there is in heaven. (Piper 2018, 135) Mary K. Baxter also said, [Heaven’s] glories, its beauties, its wonders are beyond human powers of description. (Baxter, 27) Furthermore, in many cases their minds cannot recall many of the things since they returned, because those things are incomprehensible without our heavenly minds.

Second, we can only imagine things that are related to our own experience in some way. But some features of heaven are far different from anything in this world. People blind from birth have seen colors, but have not been able to relate them to the colors we see here because having never seen colors they have no point of reference. This is similar to many of the things these authors have seen or experienced. So since much of heaven is far beyond our experience here, we have no point of reference for imagining heaven.

I have provided an annotated bibliography that describes each book. Then throughout the manuscript I have made reference to the book from which I obtained the testimony along with page references. This is provided so if you want to explore further what that author said, you have a link to the place to look. This is recognition that I cannot do complete justice to these other authors’ experiences. So I encourage you to take what I have done as a stepping-stone into your own study. You can choose from my descriptions which authors you wish to study further and read their experiences in their own words.

For those who doubt the veracity of any particular account they have read or heard about, this book, by bringing together multiple accounts of the same features, demonstrates that these experiences cannot be attributed to hallucinations or drugs, but must be considered authentic. Hallucinations occur in the brain so it is not possible for two people to hallucinate the same thing. One of the authors included, Eben Alexander, began as a skeptical neurosurgeon assuming all near death experiences¹ were just functions of brain wave activity until he had his own experience out of his body. But it is clear from this book that many people have seen essentially the same things in heaven. Furthermore, these testimonies are from different genders, different ages, different locations (from Australia to the Middle East), and different years, making it impossible for them to be contrived deceptions or fictional stories. You can be assured these authors are faithfully reporting what they saw, heard, and felt. W. Mark Lanier, a trial lawyer, in his book Christianity on Trial, made the statement, In my courtroom experience, anytime two stories are identical, there is strong likelihood of collusion. The truth is that eyewitnesses notice different things. One may see two cars racing through an intersection while another notices a green one. That does not mean one is right and another is wrong. It means that the stories need to be combined to see if they make sense.² In this book none of the eyewitnesses saw exactly the same thing, but together they give a more complete picture of what heaven is like.

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1 I call most NDE’s Temporary Death Experiences because the individuals were clinically dead but later resuscitated.

2 W. Mark Lanier. 2014. Christianity on Trial: A Lawyer Examines the Christian Faith. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, pg. 204.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I acknowledge my gratitude to Alan Bailey for reviewing the whole manuscript and indicating numerous corrections and errors. Marlene McClelland and Janet Gilson also contributed numerous suggestions. Christine Detrick has been an avid supporter from the first edition. Many at First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa (FirstChurchTulsa.org) have also been very supportive from the beginning. I also appreciate the opportunities FirstChurch gave me to teach classes that led to the inspiration for this book. The staff at Christian Faith Publishing was very helpful in getting the first edition published, and the staff at Trilogy Christian Publishers was very helpful in getting the second edition published. And I appreciate all those who bought the earlier editions and gave me encouraging feedback, including testimonials of how they were blessed by the book.

I also acknowledge the artistic contributions of Laurie Brumbaugh that are scattered throughout the manuscript and to Marlene McClelland for putting together the ideas for the original cover. I am grateful to the many friends who encouraged me and reviewed some of what I wrote. In addition to the above these include Beth Pielsticker, and John McCormack.

CHAPTER 1

Approaching Heaven

There are different stories of people’s first encounter with heaven. Some people describe traveling fast through space, as in a tunnel or on a beam of light. Others’ first experience is of being in the arms of Jesus. Some are met by friends who guide them. Others are guided by angels or even Jesus himself. Some pass through a fog or veil into the presence of heaven. And some are just suddenly there. In the next paragraphs, I will share some testimonies of each of these types of travels to heaven.

Friends and Guides

Marvin Besteman was taken by two angels to heaven. Two men showed up in his hospital room. They looked like regular guys except they wore white robes. They did not have wings. He said they unhooked all his tubes, about five in all. That didn’t make sense to Marvin either, and he just assumed because of his nature they needed to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. They put their arms around him and took off. The trip was smooth, unlike some airplane trips, and he had no fear just perfect serenity. As they flew for a few seconds or minutes through a clear blue sky he had peace and profound sense of lightness and calm. They climbed for a few seconds and then changed directions, ultimately coming in for a landing like Canada Geese landing. He noticed he was no longer wearing his blue hospital gown but now wore a light brown golf shirt, tan pants, and shoes. As soon as his feet touched down, his two angels disappeared. (Besteman, 31-33,51-52)

Another of those who encountered friends who guided her to heaven was Mary Neal. She is an orthopedic surgeon living with her husband and children in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. They became friends with a family running a canoe and kayak service in Idaho and were excellent kayakers themselves. The families went to Chile one winter for a white-water kayak trip. The trip did not turn out well. A lesser-experienced kayaker preceded Mary over a falls and got stuck between two rocks. Mary couldn’t stop or get around and went under the other kayak and got pinned under water. The force of the current prevented her from getting out of her kayak until she lost consciousness. She wrote of her experience dying while submerged in the river. When her spirit was released from her body and began to tumble from her submerged kayak, she felt a pop. She felt released from a shell, freeing her soul. When her soul rose from the water, she encountered a group of fifteen to twenty human spirits sent by God, who greeted her with the most overwhelming joy she had ever experienced and could ever imagine. She says it was an incredible joy. They were like a large welcoming committee. She likened it to the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 12:1. This welcoming committee was wildly cheering for her as she arrived.

She felt a kindred spirit with them and knew they were sent to guide her across the divide of time and dimension that separates our world from God’s. She also knew they were to protect her during her journey. (Neal 2012, 68-69)

This was also the experience of Rebecca Springer, who suffered an extended painful illness. One night she had intense suffering and, in the morning, seemed to be standing on the floor by the bed in front of a stained-glass window in her house. She was aware of someone standing beside her. She saw it was her husband’s favorite brother, Frank, who had died many years ago. She cried out joyously to her brother-in-law and expressed how glad she was to see him. As he drew her toward the window, she looked back at the room she was about to leave forever she thought. She went with him through the window, out onto the veranda, and from there, in some mysterious way, down to the street. (Springer, 8-9)

Tunnel or Beam

Betty Eadie died from complications after a hysterectomy. At the moment of death, she felt a surge of energy. It was like the pop Mary Neal experienced as her spirit came free from her body. She stayed in her room, studied her body, realized her body was dead, wanted to tell someone, and experienced weightlessness and a freedom from pain. Then three guys in brown robes showed up who seemed to her to exhibit spirituality, knowledge, and wisdom. She left her room in a great whirling black mass. It was as if she was moving faster than the speed of light through a tunnel toward a pinpoint of light. The pinpoint light turned out to be the radiant brilliance of Jesus, as she landed in his presence. (Eadie, 29)

Jim Woodford had trouble moving back toward his truck after he passed out from an overdose of opiods³. But when he saw someone slumped over the steering wheel, he recognized that person was him and he had died. He then involuntarily began moving upwards. It appears our movements toward heaven are determined for us; it is not a choice we make. In seconds he was looking at the bed of his truck and then was thousands of feet up and moving faster and faster. When he looked up he saw a tunnel of light, and then a golden circle about sixty feet in diameter appeared. The circle revealed an entrance to an immense distance. It opened up and he entered the tunnel at a very fast speed. As a former pilot he recognized his speed to be at least one thousand miles an hour, yet there was no sound or wind. He was traveling feet first tilted back at about a forty-five-degree angle. Inside the tunnel was a swirling cloud, but a cloud more solid that those in the sky on Earth. He focused on a light at the end of the tunnel. For someone who has always arrogantly valued being in control, being out of control was a new and humbling experience for him. When he reached the end of the tunnel the opening widened, he decelerated to a soft landing on his feet in a mist that was the portal to what lay beyond. As he tentatively stepped forward, he looked down and saw he was standing on the most incredibly beautiful, perfectly manicured green grass anyone could ever imagine. He was also amazed that light rippled out from the grass when he stepped on it. Light was everywhere. (Jim Woodford, 53-54)

Dale Black stayed with his body at the hospital for a while and then he moved out of the room, down the hallway where the walls disappeared into a long corridor of light. It wasn’t a tunnel of light but a path in the darkness delineated by light. He was out of his body, but he felt fully complete. He traveled at an incredible speed. Even with the incredible speed of travel, he felt no sense of movement, no g-forces, no wind in his face, no ear popping. Millions of tiny spheres of light were moving past. Two angels were accompanying him. He wondered what was happening to him but began to anticipate something wondrous was coming. The light of the corridor was coming from a central source to which he was headed. It was the whitest light he had ever seen, but as he approached the central source, it became yellow-white and then golden. Unlike the sun’s light, this light was a living substance. (Black 2010, 98; Black 2018, 156-159, 164)

One of Dr. Maurice Rawlings’ patients, Mr. Ledford, died of heart failure. He remembers everything being black, and then seeing the hospital staff working on him. It seemed strange to him because he felt perfectly fine. He couldn’t see himself clearly and wasn’t sure that the body they were working on was his, so he moved to one side so he could see and verified that the body was indeed his.

He saw three or four people come in, including a boy in charge of oxygen. He thought the others must be nurses from another unit since he had not seen them before. Then everything seemed to be dimming out and going black again. He sensed he was moving through a long corridor. After a while, he became aware of a small pinpoint of light that looked like a bird. The pinpoint of light slowly became larger and larger until it looked like a flying white dove. It eventually became so big and bright that the whole area was lit with the brilliant, beautiful light. It surpassed anything he had ever seen before. (Rawlings, 76)

The moment Crystal McVea closed her eyes in the surgery room, she was suddenly in the presence of God. It happened in the same instant. (McVea, 11) But after being with Him for a bit (described in the chapter on meeting Jesus), she, her two angels (described in the chapter on angels) and God traveled through something like a tunnel of brightness, brightness above and below, toward an even brighter light, more intense, vivid, golden, and beautiful than all other brightness. She knew it was heaven, the gates of heaven, the entrance to heaven. God made it clear that once she reached the gate she could not come back. She had excitement and expectation about getting there, but she also had a vision of her four children. She knew they would be okay without her and she would see them again when they came to heaven. She knew she wanted to stay with God. But as they neared the gates, she knew it wasn’t her time to be there. There was someone she was supposed to meet. She eventually met that person at a testimony service she did not want to do. This is described in the Chapter 19: Life Here after Heaven Visit. (McVea, 149-152)

When Ian McCormack died it was dark and he couldn’t see what was around him. He moved around but didn’t bump into anything like his hospital bed. He could not even see his hand in front of his face and it was bitterly cold. He tried to touch his face and his hand went right through; he apparently did not have his physical body. Then he sensed evil around him, but he couldn’t see the evil beings. He said he felt a terrible encroaching evil all around him. The evil beings began to communicate with him, told him to shut up! and that he was in hell. He became aware of other people there in the same predicament as him. He said he used to think hell was a party place where you get to do all the things you couldn’t do on Earth. But it is not like that at all. He said it was the most frightening place he had ever been in and people were not able to do anything their evil hearts desired.

But then a brilliant light shown upon him and drew him out of the darkness. It surrounded him and he ascended up into the beam of light. He was drawn to a large circular opening above him, like a tunnel. The source of the light emanated from the end of the tunnel. It was unspeakably bright and it seemed all light came from it. He could see a whole world through the opening. Waves of greater density broke off from the light and came toward him. The first gave him warmth and comfort. The second wave gave off total and complete peace, unlike anything he had tried in his search for peace on Earth including studies, alcohol, sport, drugs, women, and more. But now he had total peace. He also saw that his body was full of the same light he saw coming from the end of the tunnel. The third wave brought him total joy. A voice spoke from the light and asked him by name if he wished to return. He couldn’t figure out where he was but the voice spoke again. Then it said if you return you must see in a new light. At that point he realized he was seeing Jesus. (Sharkey, 24-28)

Immediate Arrival

Others just appear in the brilliance of heaven. Richard Eby died from a fall from a second story balcony railing that broke. He hit his head on pavement and it split open. He died instantly, but on the way to the hospital apparently his life functions resumed and the leisurely ambulance ride turned into a lights-flashing, siren-blaring, emergency run. He says one moment he was in Chicago and the next moment in heaven, one moment in miserable humidity and then next in the most beautiful wondrous world he had ever known. He was met with an overwhelming sense of peace and the sharpest mind he had ever had. (Eby, 202-203)

When Betty Malz (Betty Upchurch at the time) died from a ruptured appendix in the hospital, the transition was serene and peaceful, she said. She found herself walking up a green grassy hill. The grass was beautiful, the most vivid shade of green she had ever seen. (Malz, 84)

Don Piper specifically says that he never experienced any of these other arrival patterns. He was crossing a bridge going about 45 mph when he met a semitrailer truck head-on going about 60 mph. One moment he was looking at an eighteen-wheeler coming right at him and the next moment he was standing in heaven. (Piper 2018, 7) He was just suddenly enveloped by a brilliant light when he found himself in heaven. He was filled with joy and saw a crowd of people, including some that he knew, but Jesus was not there. They rushed toward him smiling and praising God. (Piper 2004, 21-22)

An angel and Jesus came to Mary K. Baxter and told her God wanted her to see heaven. He said, come and see the glory of God, and at that moment she was suddenly standing outside one of the gates of heaven. (Baxter, 22)

Jeanne Enstad was in the hospital for a heart value repair when the repair failed and she was rushed to the operating room. There she heard someone call code blue, but a warm, comforting voice told her, Jeanne, you are fine. She tried to tell those working on her that she was fine, and they needn’t be worried, but they acted like they could not hear her. She felt tranquility with an incredible kind of unconditional love she had not experienced before. She was surrounded by a beautiful white light and a gentle, loving touch. Looking down she saw her white gown like a princess and looking up, she saw amazing beautiful, sparkling, golden streets. She was suddenly in heaven. (Enstad, 29-30)

Jeff Olsen left his body at the scene of the accident and immediately was in heaven with his wife Tamara. (Olsen, 31)

Immediate Arrival with Jesus

This is the case of Samaa Habib. She is a former Muslim in an unidentified Middle Eastern country suffering through an extended civil war. She was next to a fire extinguisher cabinet when a Jihadist’s bomb exploded in the cabinet and knocked her ten feet against a wall. She died immediately. When she opened her eyes, she saw a brilliant white light illuminating Jesus, the Son of Man, the Son of God. She said His face was brighter than the sun, and He was so glorious and transcendent that she was blinded with the brilliant light. His golden light was everywhere around her. She was in awe at His mighty presence and had a great fear of the Lord that made her speechless seeing His majesty and His indescribable beauty. She was totally consumed with praise, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

She fell facedown with the weight of His glory. She was prostrate at His feet. She said she was terrified and aware of her uncleanness. She was unable to stand in His presence.

Then Jesus touched her and told her not be afraid. He reminded her that His precious blood was shed for her and that He had washed her clean as white snow, making her holy and pure. It was all because of His love for her. (Habib, 177)

This is like John’s experience recorded in Revelation 1:17, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid’" [NIV]

Jesus came to Rhoda Jubilee Mitchell as she was lying facedown on her bed, completely overwhelmed by her troubles and feeling defeated. She had cried out to God, I can’t take it anymore. Jesus came in response to her call. She said as Jesus took her out of her body, she was acutely aware of her surroundings. They ascended into the night sky, and she saw the celestial vista and Jesus’ and the Father’s communication. It revealed to her the majesty of God as Creator. (Roth, 44)

Later she says that, all of a sudden, we were in heaven, which she sensed was her home, as it loomed large in front of them. Jesus let her know immediately that she was there only for a visit and would not be allowed to stay. Then He set her down inside the walls. (Roth, 48)

Colton Burpo’s experience is hard to decipher because as a four-year-old, he didn’t tell a continuous story but added bits and pieces over time. However, one of the first things he reports is being in Jesus’ lap, presumably in the hospital. It would appear that Jesus is the one that took Colton Burpo to heaven. (Burpo, xix)

Transporters

Some people report riding in some conveyance like a cable car without the cable. This is what Jesse Duplantis said on the tape recording of his experience. Kat Kerr reported this possibility also. (Kerr 2007, 33-34)

Dawn Cypret was on what she calls a large escalator. There was a long line of people also riding on the escalator. (May, 21)

As reported later in the chapter on the rivers, lakes, and seas in this book, Rebecca Springer saw sea-going conveyances bringing people from the other side. (Springer, 108)

Arrival in Clouds

Dale Reppert saw hazy white light around the blurred individuals in his hospital room when a brilliant soft beam of white light arose from the horizon and formed a dome over him that extended infinitely in all directions. It took away his pain and gave him the feeling of the purest deepest love he had ever experienced. Then he began to see the faces of loved ones who had passed on in heaven. (Reppert, 53)

Dr. Gary Wood, after a fatal car wreck, was caught up into a funnel-shaped cloud that kept getting wider and wider. He describes walking in the cloud on a moving pathway like an airport moving walkway. He kept going up, and as he continued, he was engulfed in a brilliant light with serenity and peace washing over him. Ultimately, he landed in heaven outside the wall and an angel with a sword granted him access to heaven. (Roth, 100-102; Wood, 24)

Richard Sigmund had been driving down the road in his van when, all of a sudden, he was in a fatal single-car accident. He describes being in a thick cloud-like veil, coming through the veil like a fog, and stepping into heaven. There were gold, purple, and amber colors and a bright light. The cloud pulsated as sound was going through it. He was moving through the cloud for a few minutes but felt the cloud moving through him also.

He could hear people at the accident talking only a few inches away. There were sirens and lots of noise. Then he heard someone say he was dead.

He felt a force drawing him through the glory cloud, and he could hear people singing on the other side of the cloud. There was joyous laughter, and he felt total peace. He smelled an aroma, and experienced a taste like strawberries and cream. (Sigmund, 16-17)

When Tony Davis’ spirit left his body he floated up toward the clouds. The closer he got to them the more peace, love, and joy he felt. Then the clouds opened and he saw a huge beautiful city and felt more love than he ever had before. He felt joy and peace.

After his glimpse of the beautiful city and feeling the tremendous love